Many merchants require an exchange of customer information for services. Where one customer seeks a quote from an insurance provider, for example, the insurance provider may use the consumer information to calculate a quote for an insurance premium. In this context, service providers which may respond to a request for a quote from the customer, may be termed a “request for quote” (RFQ) provider.
Request for quote (RFQ) providers may provide one or more quotes to users in connection with various areas of business and commerce, wherein the users may transact or otherwise communicate in a business to business environment, a business to customer environment, and/or a customer to customer environment depending on the context of the transaction. A user is typically a customer (e.g., desiring to purchase and/or sell a product, service or other item of commerce). A user may also be a merchant, a distributor, a supplier, a seller, and/or the like. An RFQ is a user's request for a bid a quote for goods or services (e.g., price bid) and/or other information, wherein the user may want to purchase, sell, lease, rent, use or exploit in any way a product or service (see generally, e.g., American Express®. RFQ Services at www.americanexpress.com). An RFQ provider is typically a person, entity, or organization, which provides quotes for a product or services or requests quotes for a product or service from one or more suppliers. A supplier may be a merchant, a distributor, a manufacturer, a seller, and/or the like. In one example, a user enrolled with an RFQ provider typically receives a quote from a supplier via the RFQ provider in connection with a product or service. The user responds to the quote by accepting, rejecting, or ignoring the quote.
However, a problem with the RFQ process is that registration in multiple RFQ processes is typically time consuming and inefficient. For example, where a user desires multiple quotes from different RFQ providers, the user must enroll with each individual provider. This, of course, means that the user typically completes different enrollment applications for each RFQ provider. Thus, a method and apparatus for facilitating the enrollment of a user with multiple RFQ providers is desired.
Further, where the user enrolls with different RFQ providers, each individual RFQ provider may provide the user with a unique RFQ provider associated identifier for identifying a particular user. The unique identifier is usually provided to the user in a presentable form factor, such as, for example, a membership card, a key ring tag, including a bar code, or magnetic stripe readable user identifier, or the like. The user may be permitted to present the unique identifier to the corresponding RFQ provider to receive a quote for goods and services, and/or to purchase a desired product. The RFQ provider may recognize the unique identifier as corresponding to a particular user, authenticate the user identity and/or provide incentives or rewards to the user based on any predetermined criteria.
A problem exists, however, in that the user must often remember the location of each presentable form factor for presenting the unique identifier to each respective RFQ provider. That is, tracking numerous identifiers may be burdensome for the user. Thus, a method for managing multiple user identifiers is desired.